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Blog post - Platforms Don't Win. Ecosystems Do. (#685)
* chore(deps): bump the react group with 2 updates Bumps the react group with 2 updates: [react](https://github.com/facebook/react/tree/HEAD/packages/react) and [react-dom](https://github.com/facebook/react/tree/HEAD/packages/react-dom). Updates `react` from 19.2.6 to 19.2.7 - [Release notes](https://github.com/facebook/react/releases) - [Changelog](https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md) - [Commits](https://github.com/facebook/react/commits/v19.2.7/packages/react) Updates `react-dom` from 19.2.6 to 19.2.7 - [Release notes](https://github.com/facebook/react/releases) - [Changelog](https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md) - [Commits](https://github.com/facebook/react/commits/v19.2.7/packages/react-dom) --- updated-dependencies: - dependency-name: react dependency-version: 19.2.7 dependency-type: direct:production update-type: version-update:semver-patch dependency-group: react - dependency-name: react-dom dependency-version: 19.2.7 dependency-type: direct:production update-type: version-update:semver-patch dependency-group: react ... Signed-off-by: dependabot[bot] <support@github.com> Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Create 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx Blog post about OpenChoreo's ecosystem vision Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx Blog Meta details Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx First Paragraph - Intro Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx 2nd Para - about K8s Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx Internal Dev platform section Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx Platform section Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx AI and ecosysyem Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update authors.yml add lakmal's author details Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx Remove tags Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx fix truncate issue Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx fix title format issue Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx Fix space issues Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx Fix spacing issues Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx fix formating issues Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx formatting Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Update 2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx add preview image Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do-preview.png Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Add files via upload Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Add files via upload Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Add files via upload Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * Add files via upload Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * DCO Remediation Commit for Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakmal@lakmal.attlocal.net> Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * DCO Remediation Commit for Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakmal@lakmal.attlocal.net> Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * DCO Remediation Commit for Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> * DCO Remediation Commit for Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> --------- Signed-off-by: dependabot[bot] <support@github.com> Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakwarus@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakmal@lakmal.attlocal.net> Co-authored-by: dependabot[bot] <49699333+dependabot[bot]@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Lakmal Warusawithana <lakmal@lakmal.attlocal.net>
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‎blog/2026-06-05-platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do.mdx‎

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---
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slug: platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do
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title: Platforms Don't Win. Ecosystems Do
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authors: [lakmal]
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description: "The long-term success of an Internal Developer Platform is not determined by the technologies it embeds, but by the ecosystem it enables."
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category: community
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image: ./assets/previews/platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do-preview.png
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---
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# Platforms Don't Win. Ecosystems Do
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## Building a Vendor-Neutral Developer Platform
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For years, the cloud native community has debated which technologies win.
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- Which ingress controller?
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- Which service mesh?
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- Which observability stack?
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- Which CI/CD engine?
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- Which AI framework?
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History has shown that these debates rarely have permanent answers.
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A decade ago, Mesos looked unstoppable. Service meshes exploded with innovation. New observability platforms emerge every year. Today, AI infrastructure is evolving even faster than Kubernetes itself.
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Yet many Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) are still designed around a single assumption:
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**The platform team knows the right technology choices, and everyone else should use them.**
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That assumption creates one of the biggest long-term risks in platform engineering: vendor lock-in.
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The real job of a platform is not to force technology decisions. It is to provide a stable developer experience while allowing the underlying technology stack to evolve.
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> Developers should depend on platform capabilities, not platform implementations.
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And that's why platforms alone don't win.
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**Ecosystems do.**
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## Kubernetes Didn't Win Because It Included Everything
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Kubernetes itself succeeded because it became an ecosystem, not because it solved every problem.
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Kubernetes does not include a built-in CNI, ingress controller, storage engine, observability stack, or CI/CD system.
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Instead, it defines stable abstractions:
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* Pods
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* Services
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* Deployments
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* Ingress
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* Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs)
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Innovation happens behind those abstractions.
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Organizations can replace Flannel with Cilium, NGINX with Envoy, Prometheus with another metrics backend, or ArgoCD with Flux without fundamentally changing how developers interact with Kubernetes.
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The ecosystem evolves while the user experience remains stable.
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This separation between interface and implementation is perhaps Kubernetes' greatest architectural achievement.
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Developer platforms should learn from that model.
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## The Hidden Problem with Many Internal Developer Platforms
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Many IDPs simplify Kubernetes by hiding its complexity.
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That's valuable.
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But often they replace one form of complexity with another.
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Instead of exposing Kubernetes primitives, they tightly couple the platform to a specific collection of technologies:
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* One ingress solution
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* One workflow engine
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* One observability vendor
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* One security model
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* One AI framework
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Initially, this feels simpler.
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But over time, platform teams discover that changing one of these technologies requires changing the platform itself.
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The platform becomes the bottleneck.
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Ironically, the platform designed to accelerate innovation starts slowing it down.
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## Platform Teams Need Freedom Too
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We often talk about improving the developer experience.
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But platform engineers are users too.
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Their requirements evolve constantly:
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* Replace one networking stack with another.
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* Introduce a new observability backend.
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* Add cost management capabilities.
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* Integrate new security scanners.
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* Adopt emerging AI tooling.
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* Support organization-specific workflows.
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A platform that cannot evolve forces teams to choose between stability and innovation.
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A platform built around an ecosystem allows both.
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## Designing for an Ecosystem
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At OpenChoreo, we started with a simple architectural principle:
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> **Kubernetes remains the system of record.**
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Instead of building a monolithic platform, OpenChoreo provides higher-level abstractions for developers while allowing platform capabilities to be composed from interchangeable modules.
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This led to several key design decisions.
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### Multi-Plane Architecture
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Rather than placing everything into a single control plane, OpenChoreo separates responsibilities across multiple planes:
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* Control Plane
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* Data Plane
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* Workflow Plane
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* Observability Plane
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Each plane can evolve independently while presenting a unified experience to developers.
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### High-Level Platform Abstractions
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Developers should think about applications, APIs, components, environments, and resources—not networking plugins or ingress controllers.
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The platform translates those higher-level concepts into Kubernetes-native implementations.
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As underlying technologies change, developer workflows remain unchanged.
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### Extensible APIs
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Every platform capability should be accessible through stable APIs.
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Whether consumed by portals, CLIs, GitOps pipelines, automation systems, or AI agents, the same abstractions apply.
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This avoids creating separate operational models for humans and machines.
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### Ecosystem Modules
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Modern platforms cannot anticipate every future requirement.
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Instead of embedding every capability into the core platform, OpenChoreo allows functionality to be delivered through ecosystem modules.
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Examples include:
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* Networking modules
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* Observability modules
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* Security modules
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* FinOps integrations
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* Workflow extensions
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* Infrastructure providers
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* Built-in agents
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* Reusable skills
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This allows organizations to adopt new technologies without redesigning the platform itself.
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## AI Makes Ecosystems Even More Important
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The rise of AI agents introduces a new challenge.
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Agents need access to platform capabilities just as human developers do.
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They need to deploy applications.
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They need to inspect observability data.
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They need to trigger workflows.
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They need to understand policies and guardrails.
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If these capabilities are tightly coupled to vendor-specific implementations, every AI integration becomes custom work.
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Instead, OpenChoreo treats AI as another ecosystem participant.
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The same platform abstractions exposed to humans are also exposed to agents through MCP servers, reusable skills, APIs, and workflows.
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The goal is not to build a separate AI platform.
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The goal is to make AI a first-class consumer of the same ecosystem.
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## The Future of Platform Engineering
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Platform engineering is often described as building products for developers.
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That's true.
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But products eventually become ecosystems.
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The most successful cloud native projects didn't win because they had the best individual features.
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* Linux
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* Kubernetes
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* Prometheus
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* Backstage
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They won because they created environments where innovation could happen without replacing the foundation.
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Internal Developer Platforms should aim for the same outcome.
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The platform should provide consistency.
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The ecosystem should provide innovation.
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Developers should experience stability.
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Platform teams should retain freedom.
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Organizations should never have to choose between adopting new technology and preserving their developer experience.
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Because in the long run, platforms don't win.
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### Ecosystems do.
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{/* truncate */}
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‎blog/assets/previews/platforms-dont-win-ecosystems-do-preview.png‎

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‎blog/authors.yml‎

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url: https://github.com/Mirage20
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page: true
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lakmal:
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name: Lakmal Warusawithana
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title: OpenChoreo Maintainer @ WSO2
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url: https://github.com/lakwarus
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image_url: https://github.com/lakwarus.png
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page: true

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